Howard Webb reveals Everton game which he 'bottled' in his early days as a referee

Former Premier League referee Howard Webb has recalled how he lost control of a game involving Everton in only his second season in the job.

Webb, who took charge of 296 league games, has become a public figure in the sport after taking control of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) and appeared on the latest episode of ‘Stick to Football’ in a growing attempt to add more awareness for refereeing.

One of the topics he spoke about was the mental toughness needed to be successful in the role. Speaking on the Overlap’s latest podcast, Webb revealed an early game in his refereeing career nearly broke him, citing Everton vs Bolton in his second season where he failed to have control of the players. “You’ve got to go on the pitch feeling like you can deal with tough characters,” he began.

“I had a really tough game in my second season - I refereed Everton vs Bolton and I got took to the cleaners by some really big characters. People like Duncan Ferguson, Tommy Gravesen and David Weir.

“I started refereeing the game ok in the first 20 minutes, but the atmosphere was really toxic in the stadium. I gave a couple of fouls that maybe seemed a little soft but after 20 minutes it was really getting on top of me - I started to hide.

“I started to let things go, my threshold for a foul became too high because every time I blew I was getting loads of negative feedback. I started to bottle it in that moment, I was a new and inexperienced referee with some really experienced players and Gary Speed said to me about 40 minutes in ‘you’re not doing your job’ and he was right. I just wanted to go home, you know what I mean?”